The Iron Man and the Valley

On 31 October 2026, India marks the 151st birth anniversary of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel. The day has been observed as Rashtriya Ekta Diwas, or National Unity Day, since 2014. This year, it also concludes a two-year nationwide celebration of his 150th birth anniversary that began in 2024. Across the country, people will participate in runs, take pledges and remember the man who gave independent India its shape. In Kashmir, the day carries a meaning deeper than ceremony. The story of India’s unity cannot be told without the Valley and the Valley’s own story, told honestly, has always been one of people coming together rather than drifting apart.
Vallabhbhai Patel was born in Nadiad, Gujarat in 1875, into a farming family. He became a successful lawyer before giving up his profession to join the freedom struggle. His leadership of the Bardoli farmers in 1928 earned him the title by which the country still knows him, Sardar. His greatest test came with independence itself. In 1947, more than 560 princely states stood outside the new Union, each presenting a separate question mark on the map. Working with V. P. Menon, Patel addressed these challenges one by one. He offered rulers dignity, gave their people a share in a common future and reserved firmness for those who refused to cooperate. Within about two years, a patchwork of kingdoms had become part of a unified nation. Few nations have been integrated on such a scale with so little bloodshed.
Kashmir has a special chapter in that story. In October 1947, armed raiders crossed the border and advanced towards Srinagar, leaving Baramulla looted and burning in their wake. Maharaja Hari Singh signed the Instrument of Accession on 26 October. The following morning, Indian soldiers landed at the Srinagar airfield. Patel was among those who strongly supported the airlift and the road through Pathankot that would keep the troops supplied. Yet the defence of Kashmir was never the soldier’s work alone. Maqbool Sherwani, a young man from Baramulla, misled the raiders about the strength of the approaching Indian Army and bought Srinagar precious time. He paid for it with his life. In the city, ordinary Kashmiris of every faith kept watch over their neighbourhoods and helped maintain peace. The lesson of 1947 is simple: Kashmir was not merely saved for India. Kashmiris stood with India.
Long before maps and treaties, this land was teaching the rest of the subcontinent how to live together. Kashmir gave India Kalhana’s Rajatarangini, one of the earliest written histories of the region, and a tradition of scholarship that attracted students from far away. Lal Ded and Sheikh Noor-ud-Din Wali, revered as Nund Rishi, spoke in the language of ordinary people and emphasised that God belongs to no single community. Their verses are still recited in homes across communities. Kashmiriyat, the Valley’s spirit of shared living, is simply the local expression of the idea Sardar Patel spent his life serving. Saffron and pashmina, saints and scholars, traders and pilgrims have moved between Kashmir and the rest of India for centuries. Division is an imported product here. Unity is homegrown.
The clearest proof of this came on 22 April 2025, at Baisaran near Pahalgam. When terrorists opened fire on tourists, Syed Adil Hussain Shah, a pony operator from Hapatnar village, did not run. He tried to wrest a weapon from one of the attackers to protect the visitors in his care and was killed. He was the only local among those who died. He was not alone in his courage. Guides, pony operators, drivers, and shopkeepers carried the wounded, sheltered tourists, and escorted them to safety. In the days that followed, the Valley shut down in protest against terrorism, candlelight marches filled the streets, and families across Kashmir mourned visitors they had never met as if they were their own guests. The Jammu and Kashmir Government later honoured Adil posthumously with a bravery award on Republic Day.
The men behind that attack wanted to set Kashmir against the rest of India. Kashmir answered by standing with its guests. That, more than any speech, is what Ekta looks like.
On 6 June 2025, the Chenab Rail Bridge, standing 359 metres above the river and recognised as the world’s highest railway arch bridge, was opened, and the first Vande Bharat train ran between Katra and Srinagar. A dream more than a century old that of connecting the Valley to the rest of the country by rail had finally come true. Steel and concrete, however, only make unity possible.
People make it real. Unity becomes real when a Kashmiri student tops her class at a university in Pune or Bengaluru, when a fast bowler from Jammu and Kashmir wears the India cap, when a papier-mâché artisan from Srinagar sells his work at a fair in Chennai, and when a family from Kerala returns to a houseboat for the second summer in a row. It becomes real when a soldier helps a stranded family cross a snowbound highway and when a village elder brews kahwa for the patrol at his doorstep.
Those who wish to divide us have not given up. They have only changed their weapons. Today, an attack may arrive in the form of a doctored video, an old photograph with a new and false caption, or a hashtag manufactured across the border, designed to convince young Kashmiris that they are alone, unheard, and unwanted. Every such campaign depends on one thing: that we forward messages before thinking. Ekta in the digital age begins with a pause. Check where a message came from. Ask who benefits if you believe it. Trust the neighbour you know over the anonymous account you do not. A rumour stopped on one phone is a stone never thrown and a curfew never needed.
Unity has never meant sameness. Sardar Patel’s India embraces hundreds of languages, cuisines, and ways of worship, and it is stronger because of every one of them. A Kashmiri remains fully Kashmiri—in language, faith, food, and dress—while being fully Indian. The wazwan on the table and the Tricolour on the school building do not compete; they belong together. For the young people of the Valley, that sense of belonging is also an open door. The civil services, the Armed Forces and the police, national sports teams, universities, start-ups, and the growing tourism economy are all theirs to explore and contribute to. The future that terrorism offers ends in a graveyard. The future that unity offers extends as far as a young Kashmiri’s talent can take them.
Sardar Patel stitched together a map. Keeping its threads strong is the responsibility of every generation that follows him. In Kashmir, that thread has been held by the saint and the shepherd, the student and the soldier, by Maqbool Sherwani in 1947 and by Adil Hussain Shah in 2025. On this Rashtriya Ekta Diwas, the Valley has every reason to hold its head high—not as a question in India’s story, but as one of its proudest answers.